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Day 4: Hanbok at Gyeongbokgung - Seoul, South Korea

The last time we went to Seoul, we rented Hanbok at Namsangol Hanok Village. It was around 10,000 won for less than an hour. That's including the time to pick out the hanbok and putting them on. This time before our trip to Seoul, we want to take more pic in hanbok but don't like the idea of having a time limit or expensive rental (the rental at Namsangol Hanok Village, wasn't that expensive, but the rental price is basically the same as the actually buying price for hanbok online.

Our hanbok isn't the best looking ones. We got it on the Chinese version of ebay, at www.taobao.com. It's about US$15 with shipping included! For something that we would just wear for a few hours for selfies purpose, I think the price is great and the quality is acceptable.

That's what the online shop showed online. The actual hanbok arrived looking pretty much the same. I didn't get the puffy crown thing to wear under the dress as it would be too inconvenient when I walk around. To us, we just wanted to get the one with the brightest colors, as same with makeup, colors of what we wear would get washed out in photos. So, better to get something bright.

We went to Gyeongbokgung to take some pics in hanbok, and for the Nth mistake we have made on this trip, it turns out we went on a Tuesday and Gyeongbokgung is closed on Tuesday!!!!! I looked at Cho giving her to look "What should we do now?" Nothing could stop Cho. We already carried our hanbok in our backpack and she wasn't going to give up the hard work of carrying it around all day without actually using them. There is a museum next to Gyeongbokgung with lockers (free of charge), there's also a big spacious washroom. So, we just changed into our hanbok and start taking pictures OUTSIDE of Gyeongbokgung. In Cho's defense, the inside and the outside of the palace looks similar. We just need some sort of traditional looking building behind us. And sure enough, we had a lot of fun taking hanbok selfies outside the palace.

We were the only one who came in hanbok without knowing it's closed on Tuesday. We saw about several other girls in hanbok outside the palace taking photos. To be honest, their rented hanbok look pretty much the same as our. The difference is that they had head pieces, the dress is nicely ironed with a crown inside to make it all puffy. I heard a girl said they rented the dress for 4 hours and they don't know how they can kill 4 hours outside of the palace taking pictures. Luckily, we own our hanbok and we can pack up anytime we want. We were there for about 45min and took about a million selfies. Buying our own hanbok definitely worth it. The quality in real life is of course not that great, but you really can't tell in pictures. We get to control where and when we wear it with no time limit. We can roll around on the ground without worrying about ruining the hanbok as it's cheap and we won't have to pay a fine if it's ruined.